Masks: Birth of Heroes

Session Summary 9

The scene opens with Spark, Maelstrom, Feroz, and Cricket saying their goodbyes. It’s apparent the boys are blaming Spark for ruining their night, and she, in turn, is blaming them for not being honest and upfront. Because he has a pass due to a “family emergency”, Cricket decides to stay the night with his cousin, and the other three take Spark’s ship back to the school.

They land in the bay and sneak back towards their dorms. There are normally movement-sensitive lasers set up to ensure the students don’t sneak out at night, and the kids are partway back to their rooms when the security systems and lights suddenly switch to emergency power and an alarm begins to sound. Students are expected to begin moving towards the arena, which is the most secure area of the school, in the case of an emergency, so Feroz and Maelstrom join the general stream of students. Spark ducks into a bathroom to hastily throw some clothes over her outfit. As she does, she gets a text from Scathe, who was wakened by the alarm, to hurry to the arena, and Spark texts back that she’ll be there in a second.

In the arena, it’s clear that no one really knows what’s going on. A handful of staff are supervising the students and taking roll call, but it’s apparent that both purple (the Royals) and green squads are missing. When Mai comes by to ensure that red squad is accounted for, Feroz asks about the missing students and wonders if there’s anything they can do to help. Mai assures him that the teachers have everything under control, and she asks Feroz to tell her if he happens to know where to find the missing students. He doesn’t.

Once Mai returns to her rounds, Spark asks Scathe how detention with Agent Frost was…but she doesn’t really care, because she’s more anxious to tell Scathe how the boys ruined their night out. There is a little bit of bickering during which Spark points out that any of the boys could have asked her to dance, and she would have said yes and not gone outside with Asher, which is duly noted by Feroz, and then the ground shakes ominously and silence descends on the arena. More of the teachers hurry out to figure out what’s going on, leaving only Agnes, Mai, and the principal there.

Maelstrom extends his senses outwards and is alarmed when he senses both fire inside the school and water leaking in. There is another rumble from the opposite side of the school, and he senses more fire and more water. He informs the team, then tries to inform the adults. The principal blows him off, but Mai seems genuinely concerned with his report. She gathers up red squad and asks him to take them to where he sensed the fire and water.

First, however, they need to escape the arena without being seen. Feroz casts a large shadow through which the team sneaks out, and Scathe intends to pull him through that same shadow once they’re safely outside. She loses control of her powers, however, and the shadows writhe into the gym, causing a general panic amongst the students and staff there.

They find themselves in green squad’s dorms, and they are in shambles. Oak appears and knocks out Mai, then gives a lengthy speech about how he’s been recruited to a better school than this one and about how he’ll be a god there. He also seems much tougher than when last the team faced him. Feroz moves Mai out of harm’s way, then attacks Oak by ripping off a limb and beating him with it. Oak seems impressed with him and invites him to leave “this shithole” with him. This offends Scathe, and she uses the sharp edge of all of the dimensions to cut Oak into firewood.

Spark notices a bomb ticking on a nearby wall. They assume the bombs were used to crack the dome, and the second could cause it to collapse completely. Unfortunately, the only way Spark can disarm it is to use her shrunken ship to cut the power, so she sucks it up and does it. Meanwhile, Maelstrom assumes a second bomb is about to go off across campus, so he fills the entire area with a fiery inferno to minimize the impact of the second bomb. Sure hope nobody was over there…

With the immediate danger diffused, the group decides to wake up Mai and tell her what’s happened. Spark uses the same marbles she had used to awaken Scathe some time ago, and, while doing so, she tells Feroz that he did a good job rescuing her. Scathe, meanwhile, has rejoined the group, and it’s obvious that the pieces of firewood are beginning to reassemble.

Upon awakening, Mai is a bit dubious about the details of their story, so Scathe tries to pick up the pieces of Oak and put him together more quickly so he can be interrogated. Mai tells them all that she intends to talk to them later about the ethics of killing and hurting people. In the meantime, they should go investigate the other side of campus.

Maelstrom is able to reabsorb most of the flame — which is good, because he finds Jack barely keeping the flames off of Ice Rig with a bubble of energy of her own. She collapses as soon as Maelstrom removes the threat.

CRICKET
While all of this is happening, Cricket receives a call from Leverage to meet on the docks. Once he arrives, she tells him that the school’s security is down and that they’re breaking in. And then she jumps into the water. When Cricket tells her he can’t breathe underwater, she directs him to some scuba gear in the back of her car, then proceeds to mock him for not knowing how his own stolen equipment works.

As they descend towards the school, she points out a fire that’s burning near the wall of the dome. He says he doesn’t know what it is, so she suggests they stay away from it: they’re here for one reason and one reason only, and that is to steal as much as possible.

Inside, they decide to split their forces: Leverage will go for the projectors in the arena while Cricket will break into the vault. Cricket is able to find the vault without difficulty and is confronted by a smart door demanding an authorization code. He manages to outsmart it, and it opens. While inside and after looting a couple of things, he hears footsteps and voices from the corridor, so he quickly hides himself above the vault door.

The voices are alarmed that the vault has already been opened. The owners of said voices step inside, and Cricket sees that there are two of them: one a member of purple squad and one a member of green squad. They head over to where Cricket had picked up his last piece of loot: a Sevitri Command Helmet that allows the wearer to control troops. They don’t have a lot of time to be alarmed that it’s missing: Cricket knocks them over with a soundwave and shuts the vault on them.

He hurries back to where he was supposed to meet Leverage, and she takes a moment to gloat about how easy it was to steal the projectors, thanks to all the chaos in the arena due to some rogue shadows. He nervously tells her they had probably better go, and so they do.